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Re: Sopa

The unintended consequences will bite those supporters in the ass. Yes, certainly there are pure pirates out there who illegally download and make a profit, there are other who download and use for their private use without compensation to the owners / distributors, and then there are those who download and those downloads are temporary as well as a great advertisement for the artists / distributors. As a result of those downloads or views on YouTube or other sites, they go out and pay and watch those movies, buy the songs, etc... remove that and the majority of those sites and uses of this downloaded content will be gone, and so will the free advertisements for those products.

Secondly - SOPA or any other legal bill passed will not stop piracy. It will simply force sites to fine new creative ways to distribute materials either through a loophole in the law, or bypass it totally. Business is pissing in the wind - what they need to do is embrace the technology and find a way to still make money on it, instead of finding new ways to stop it. They can't stop it just like the Romans couldn't stop Christianity. ('Tis the season after all).

Re: Sopa

SOPA is one monster of a bill.

Ultimately, as Ockham says, it won't stop piracy. If anything it will deplete business even further. Artists and content creators who have unilaterally dropped DRM and other restrictive forms of content management have, for the most people, seen increased sales. The reason is because without having to pay for DRM services, they save money and pass that saving onto the customer, and also because people are more willing to buy things that they are assured of actually being able to use once they've done so.

SOPA is just trying to turn the entire internet into one big DRM scheme. And it's not going to work any better than DRM does now. Hell, Firefox extensions to circumvent it are already popping up. What it will probably do is take down a lot of businesses who are unable to moniter each of the millions of things people post on their sites. And by proxy, it will destroy the business model for content creators. Eventually, even the business side will be circumventing SOPA if they're smart. It's bad for them - just as bad as it is for customers.

Once again, these draconian measures at limiting freedom on the internet and of personal ownership are not going to do anything but hurt honest customers, and people trying to make a living. As far as the pirates? They'll be doing better than ever.

I can't even see how this is legal. Precedent says that website owners who allow people to post content to their site do not own responsibility for that content. SOPA flies in the face of that.

Re: Sopa

Originally Posted by Ockham

The unintended consequences will bite those supporters in the ass. Yes, certainly there are pure pirates out there who illegally download and make a profit, there are other who download and use for their private use without compensation to the owners / distributors, and then there are those who download and those downloads are temporary as well as a great advertisement for the artists / distributors. As a result of those downloads or views on YouTube or other sites, they go out and pay and watch those movies, buy the songs, etc... remove that and the majority of those sites and uses of this downloaded content will be gone, and so will the free advertisements for those products.

Secondly - SOPA or any other legal bill passed will not stop piracy. It will simply force sites to fine new creative ways to distribute materials either through a loophole in the law, or bypass it totally. Business is pissing in the wind - what they need to do is embrace the technology and find a way to still make money on it, instead of finding new ways to stop it. They can't stop it just like the Romans couldn't stop Christianity. ('Tis the season after all).

I agree business should focus on makaing a profit by selling their content online, not finding ways to stop internet streaming or downloading. Competing with ti could make them some very good money.

Re: Sopa

Short of making encrypted internet traffic illegal, it's pretty much impossible to stop the pirates. People get around the firewall of China. People will get around whatever they try to put in place here. The question isn't whether you can stop the pirates, because you can't. The question is how much worse will you make the internet for everyone else? Will the extra filtering slow the internet down? Can you initiate an attack against a website posting links to pirated material and then reporting the site as a pirate website? What will happen to the cost of internet service?

Re: Sopa

Hollywood and the music industry arent enjoying the gadzillions they used to make their incomes have dropped considerably for a variety of reaons...and its their big money behind trying to get this bill passed...they have been pushing for it a long time.
Next bill up will be collection of all state taxs by online retailers...and then..Id bet a national sales tax on the net might come forward.